If you’ve been hanging around the Internet for a few years, you may have heard the adage, “Content is King”.  As a writer, and in many instances a web writer, I’ve hung onto that phrase like a gold coin.  It validates what I do, which is create the content that all the lovely code in the background supports.   Code is important – useability is important, but without ongoing new content, any website will wither and die (putting the lie to my last post, heh heh).  But Doctorow takes this concept one step further.

“Content is just something to talk about” puts human interaction at the centre of the picture.  And it explains the rise of social media on the web, the growth of multi-user games on all platforms, and the persistence of people meeting in real life, and not just in “cyberspace”.  Content without conversation is just broadcasting, or just advertising.  It goes to the listener/reader/viewer/visitor… and stops there.  If the sender is lucky, it may lodge as a piece of information in the receiver’s consciousness, and they may act on it someday.  If the sender is luckier, or perhaps more engaging, it may be something that the receiver wants to talk about.  And then the message gets a whole new burst of energy.  The energy behind the message is what gives it meaning, and a life of its own.  That happens because we humans like to communicate with each other.  Thus the conversation begins.

I see the truth of this all the time on my social platforms of choice: Twitter and Facebook.  Users are constantly sending out little bits of information, but the fun really doesn’t start unless those morsels are taken up by someone else and responded to, passed along, or even “liked”.  And for that to happen, there has to be a conversation starter somewhere in the message.

“I had cornflakes for breakfast” is not likely to generate any sort of conversation beyond “Me too,” or “Yeah, so?”  But (and this really did happen to me, though it was long enough ago to be Before the Internet) “Oh shoot, the ferret I’m babysitting just jumped in my cornflakes!!” conveys a bunch of conversation starters.  Who is crazy enough to babysit a ferret?  What is it doing on the breakfast table?  Do ferrets like cornflakes?  How long did it take to clean up?  It has action, emotion, and personal experience, and those are the key ingredients to starting a conversation.

If you’ve been on Twitter, or Facebook, or even the phone – you’ll know what I’m talking about.  Our world is shaped by the relationships and conversations we have with other people – by the emotions we feel as well as the information we receive.  As you consider the message you have to bring to the world, ask yourself: is this a conversation starter?  Who will I interact with as a result of my putting it out there?  How will the conversation proceed?  What might happen?

This wisdom applies whether the nature of your conversation is commercial, or personal.  In fact, as a model of effective communication it is all the more important because it puts the personal into every transaction – and we all want to be treated like a person, and not just a “consumer” (of media or anything else), right?

Help me carry on this conversation: pass it along to your own friends, or send a comment to me.  I’d love to hear from you.

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Cute illustration by Brandon Reese

Well, here it is: Follow Friday. Or as I should write it, #followfriday or even #ff. If you are new to Twitter, Follow Friday is both a blessing and a curse, because really – the fun doesn’t start until you have enough people you are following to make it feel like a party. So you want to follow good people, and by that I mean real, interactive people, not just the sales blasts masquerading as people.

A typical #followfriday tweet looks like this:

@wordspring: #followfriday @kk @robcottingham @hummingbird604 @mynameiskate @miss604 @awsamuel @trishussey @raincoaster @gillianshaw

Not pretty is it? Nor do you have any idea that these people are very active part-time or full time in Vancouver’s social media scene. We’ve got bloggers, reporters, teachers, software geeks, and actual full-time social media community builders on that list. But how would you know? Are these the best ones? The most “famous” ones? Or just the ones I’ve followed the longest? Nothing there to tell you, except their names.

You can click on a name or two, visit their profiles and see what they have to say. Then decide if they are a good fit for your Twitter stream. But wouldn’t it be easier if you had a little bit of context from the sender?

To that end, and because I live in Victoria BC, where the social media community is beginning to blossom, here is a more full introduction to just 10 of the dozens, even hundreds, of people active on Twitter right here in #yyj (which is just a short, airport-y way of saying Greater Victoria, and not getting it confused with Victoria TX, or the Australian state of Victoria)

Why ten? Because I would be here all week if I tried to make a more comprehensive list. Because 10 people is enough to follow in one shot if you are new, and because I can do 10 different ones next Friday, if I am inspired.

1. @mikevardy – Works at the Victoria Film Festival, is just back from his long-delayed honeymoon, is very funny and creative, and has the good sense to show us all a slightly warped persona of himself – Mike Vardy, the CEO of Effing the Dog and an “eventual productivity expert”.

2. @cpudan – Dan Parks is a transplanted Californian who thinks that Victorians are so laid-back, we are on a par with Hawaiians. His mind works at warp speed, and he comes to morning Tweetups with a hundred new ideas and at least a dozen new apps to try out. Bring a pen and a notepad. This guy shares good stuff. Full of joy, too.

3. @claytonstark – The VP of – hmmm, is it engineering? at Flock’s development office, Clayton is funny, passionate, very very bright, and turning me into a huge fan not only of Flock, but of Clayton Stark

4. @tpholmes – can’t forget my dear friend Paul (not to be confused with my dearly beloved Paul, who stays far far away from Twitter) He is amazingly proactive at learning and spreading about Social Media’s many business uses – see www.paulholmes.ca for details. And together we are boosting the Social Media Club which promotes media literacy, ethical behavour and best practices.

5. @lacouvee – Janis is a force of nature! She is Twitter’s welcoming committee in our city, and loves to connect people and resources. If you want to know where to find an elephant, or ANYTHING else, talk to Janis

6. @gilnamur – I’ve only known Gil on Twitter a week, but love that he is doing the “make the world a better place” thing you see a lot on Twitter… with the important difference that he isn’t just rehashing other people’s stuff. It’s his own wisdom and generosity coming through. Check his blog, www.synaptici.com, for more good stuff.

7. @b_west – Another fella! Really, I’ve made more male friends on Twitter than I have since I was treeplanting with a whole bunch of rugby players in 1984… but I digress. Chris Burdge is the social media mojo behind Suburbia Advertising. He’s been waving the flag for authentic interaction on the corporate web for at least a couple of years longer than most of his clients realize. Now they are starting to wake up and listen. When Chris has something to say, I pay attention, because it is always of value.

8. @vic_toria – By day, she is a hardworking government employee. But Victoria Klassen pushes herself way beyond those cozy publicly-funded walls. She’s running half-marathons, volunteering to teach spin classes at the Y, climbing mountains, or at least mountain-like structures. And that’s just her workout! More important, she is an excellent writer and communicator, and has her finger on the pulse of social media. Follow her, and try to keep up.

9. @yuleheibel - Many people in Victoria have seen her columns on urbanism in Victoria’s Focus magazine. And how many of us even knew there was a field of thought and study on urbanism until Yule returned to her hometown about 5 years ago? Yes, she’s been a prof at Harvard. Yes, her whole family’s brainpower could light a small city for a month. But be neither fooled nor intimidated. Yule and her husband @wernerbahlke (slipped a bonus one in there!) are good listeners, thoughtful conversationalists and humble at heart. And community spirited, too!  Check their amazing Victoria blog aggregator, www.metrocascade.com I’m very glad to know her, and hope to get back to the Ogden Point Open Coffee groups soon. Like, a week Tuesday.

10. @jodie_nodes I’ve only known Jodie Gastell for about a week too, but I sense some major common ground between us. She has given over a whole room in her townhouse to teach blogging, with 10 netbooks and a super business plan. She also has one of the best avatars on Twitter. I’m going over for a tour and a chat next Tuesday, because really – Twitter is just a jumping off point for more extensive conversation and community building where you can do it.

There you are, new-to-Twitter people! I challenge each of you to get blogging on a 10-person sample of your Twitter stream. Tell me when you do it, and I’ll come read it.

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The tweets cover everything from the “hinting at big business plans to come” strategy to the mundane “what I ate” self-revelation.  Someone new to Twitter could copy and paste one into Twitter each day manually, or they could use HootSuite to do it for them, as you can input your tweets now for posting later.

But finding something to say each day isn’t even half the battle on Social Media.  Anyone with a burning passion, a nifty idea, or perhaps neither of those but a desire to share their stuff nonetheless, can blurt out 140 characters’ worth of “broadcast”.  The real art lies in listening and responding to the people you connect with on Twitter, and doing it in a way that offers value to others, and respects what they have to say.

Here’s the mark of an experienced and truly interactive Twitter user:  go to their profile and read down a page or so of tweets.  Ideally you will see a mixture of straightforward tweets, tweets with links attached for more information and value, retweets of good information from other people, and of course @replies to those that they follow and that follow them.  Some of the tweets appear to be “in the moment” – very specific and conversational in nature.  If you find that, you find a truly interactive tweeter.

Interactive tweeters are like gold.  And I don’t just mean they are more likely to retweet you.  I mean, they are truly wonderful people who enjoy the connections they make with others.  Hang onto them.  Better yet, emulate them.  This is the kind of interaction that creates community, enhances business relationships, promotes actual offline friendship, and builds trust.

Isn’t that the reason you are hanging out in these social networking sites in the first place?

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I am going through my “following” list on Twitter, and deleting one name after another. This involves reviewing my list, avatar after avatar, name after name and bio after bio, and assessing each for whether I want them to continue showing up in my stream or not.  I’m hoping to reduce my list from 1400-odd people I’m following to about half that.

When “Following” doesn’t equal “Friend”
I know that for many power Twitter users, 1400 people to follow seems a drop in the bucket.  Some people who want to build their following to huge numbers play the “following” game to great effect, picking up a hundred or so people each day, hoping to be followed back, then they trim back and add again, growing their list of followers in waves.   They can follow 200o people in less than a month, and as the number of followers they attract gets to about 1800, they can add still more people.   Twitter on “nutritional supplements” is how I think of it.   And if those people are chosen carefully, perhaps it can be a decent strategy for some.   While I love finding interesting new people to follow, this “forced growth” doesn’t seem like the strategy for me right now.

And I’m not “easy”, either
Autofollowing isn’t really doing the job for me, either.  Again, it’s not a strategy I dismiss entirely.  I like reciprocity as much as the next person.  But autofollowing does make me feel like an easy pushover for every marketing guru that comes along hoping to sell me something.  For the most part, it hasn’t enriched the quality of my Twitter experience.  It may have worked for Barack Obama, but even if he wrote his own tweets, I suspect his “people” monitored all the replies and direct messages he received.

Filters help, but can’t do all the work
I’ve got maybe 15% of the people I follow sorted into groups, which makes it easier to follow: local tweeps (for Victoria and Vancouver people) and Don’t Miss (for people both near and far that I’ve made a real connection with).  I could do more, but I feel like I have too many to sort! So I have decided that it’s time to simplify.

So over to my list I go, looking for familiar names and faces to hang onto.  Casually dismissing the spammers.  Agonising over “mom, runner, working from home, social media enthusiast” that I don’t recognize.  Is she using the service?  Is that enough in common to hang onto?  Am I dismissing a future friend or business partner?

Here’s how the cull works:

• If we have exchanged friendly shout-outs and even confided to each other in direct messages, you’re in.
• If you live in Victoria BC, you’re probably in.
• If something about your bio makes me say “oh wait… maybe not this one”.  You’re in.  For now.
• If you feed me wonderful content on a wonderful basis – news, links, terrific whitepapers and blog articles, you are in.
• If you are Ashton or Demi… you make me laugh.  You’re in.

The rest of you – well, you can @wordspring me.  Ask me to follow back so we can send direct messages to each other, then give me a little bit of yourself.  It doesn’t have to be much, just 140 characters of  The Real You.  Not your product, not your boss, your publicist or your intern.  Just you.  And I will follow you to the ends of the earth.  Or until Twitter is bought up by Google and the love is gone.

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Jogging past my strolling neighbours, I found myself chatting in tiny bursts: “Cute dog!” “I like your stick!” “Good afternoon” – and nearly all these little exchanges were marked with a smile back, or another comment. By the end of 40 minutes’ running, I had exchanged greetings with dozens of people – what’s more, I felt wonderful… connected, even.

I’ve been quite active on Twitter.com for a couple of months, and thinking about the nature of this communication medium: 140 characters to answer the question, as Chris Brogan says, “What has your attention?”. (While the twitter.com home page asks “What are you doing?”, Twitter seems to have evolved beyond the scope of that starting point, and attention is what it’s all about.) That’s just enough for a decent sentence, a quick response, or a kind comment. It’s an awful lot like greeting the folks you meet on the street, or on the seawall.

And to me, that similarity marks the return of something we’ve been in danger of losing – that casual but kind human contact. When we lived in smaller communities, the friendly greeting was commonplace. Everyone knew everyone else’s face, but didn’t necessarly want to become intimate friends with all their fellow citizens. It made sense to lubricate social interaction with a little small talk.

Now, with our big-box stores and freeways, we’ve lost that opportunity for the most part. Seawall friendliness is the exception rather than the rule. And that makes places like Twitter more important than you might imagine. It’s becoming the 21st-century equivalent of the village square, the promenade, the church social. We tweet because we’re human.

I’m not saying that we should all be updating our Facefook status and posting to Twitter multiple times a day. In fact, I’d promote the opposite – take the “listening” skills and the short communication that you learn online, and try applying it to the real world. Next time you are stuck in the grocery line-up, faced with catching up on the tabloid news headlines or choosing which package of gum to add to your purchase, try “tweeting” the person standing in line beside you. It can be something simple, like “wow, look how many magazine covers have the same people on them this week”, or even the classic comment about the weather. You might get a reply. You’ll certainly have made the world a slightly friendlier place.

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